


The Shadow Side of Reality

by myxstorie



Category: Johnny's Entertainment, KAT-TUN (Band), NewS (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 17:26:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/942617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myxstorie/pseuds/myxstorie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Yamapi-centric; R for violence/disturbing content</i><br/>For <b>flawedrhetoric</b> for <span class="ljuser i-ljuser"></span><a href="http://je-justfriends.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://je-justfriends.livejournal.com/"><b>je_justfriends</b></a> 2010, originally posted <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/je_justfriends/9856.html">here</a> :D Apologies for any inaccuracies within (I have practically no knowledge of medicine, forensics, detective work or mental health, and the internet can only give you so much). Everyone that helped me with this was absolutely fantastic, Amy for letting me pick her brains and reading it through, Britt for going through it with a fine toothcomb, and Dacchan & Zoe for being so patient and fantastic about everything. I really can't stress enough how grateful I am ♥</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shadow Side of Reality

Yamashita had hoped to never to have to see a scene like this ever again.

The bedclothes were soaked in blood, and when the blankets were peeled back, the wounds on the bodies were barely visible beneath all of that deep, bright red. A quick glance over them and the on-site coroner had noted two slit throats; one slice each from left to right, smooth and practiced, with blood spatter that indicated no resistance before the killer had leapt from the window and into the bushes below. There was also a messy slash across the woman's abdomen, deep enough that parts of the body never meant to see the light of day were spilling from her. Three lives taken in one night.

Detective Tomohisa Yamashita had stayed long enough for the preliminary findings to be recorded, then taken his leave, eager to be away, anywhere but here. Once outside, he sucked in a long breath of fresh air to calm his stomach and nodded to his partner before climbing into the car.

Detective Ryo Nishikido joined him shortly after, face sombre as he slipped into the passenger seat. Usually, there would be a brief scuffle over who got to drive, but not tonight. Six years of working together had given Nishikido ("Call me Ryo, you make me sound like my father.") an uncanny ability of being able to take one look at Yamashita's face and read him like a book. Yamashita thought he'd have quit a long time ago if it weren't for Ryo's sarcasm and snide humour keeping him grounded case after case.

"Ten years I've been doin' this job, and there's still sick fucks out there managing to surprise me." Oh yes, and he was pretty eloquent too.

Yamashita hummed softly and started the engine, the familiar rumble and purr soothing his tangled nerves slightly. They drove in silence, Yamashita keeping his eyes firmly on the road while Ryo watched the shadows and lights and people flit by the window, until Yamashita pulled up outside Ryo's apartment block.

"You gonna park, or just leave her out here on the street all night?" Ryo asked with an edge of sarcasm to his voice, and Yamashita turned towards him with raised eyebrows, the question evident in his expression.

"Don't even think of leaving me in an empty apartment after what we just saw." Ryo glared and motioned with his chin, "Come on, park her up. You can use the visitor's space."

Yamashita smiled softly and did as he was told. He was familiar enough with reading between the lines when Ryo spoke to know when he was dissembling and trying to cover up what he really meant, even if it was at his own expense. Besides, his room mate was out of town, and he didn't really want to be alone tonight either.

"So," Ryo said once Yamashita was nestled in a blanket on the sofa, "We can't keep working well together if you don't tell me why you're so shaken up."

"I'm fine," Yamashita replied automatically, taking the beer Ryo popped open and handed to him, and shuffled a little more under the blanket, holding the can between his hands.

Ryo lifted one eyebrow and flopped down next to him, "Sure you are."

Yamashita drew in a quiet breath and lifted one finger to flick at the ring pull on his can. It bounced back and rebounded off of the top of the can, juddering back and forth for a moment until it stilled. He let the breath out.

"You know both of my parents are dead, right?" He asked without preamble; best to get it over with, like ripping off a plaster in one go.

Ryo nodded.

Yamashita stared down at the can between his hands, a drop of condensation sliding down the side and collecting other drops as it went, growing in size. "They were killed. They owed some bad people a lot of money, and they couldn't pay. They came in while we were asleep. The police arrived before they got to me, but it was too late for my parents. They'd... they'd slit their throats and..." Yamashita swallowed, and it hurt. So many years had passed, but it still hurt like it was yesterday, "They'd cut my baby sister out of my mother's womb and let her die, too."

Ryo was silent for a long moment. "... Shit. So today... Shit. I'm sorry."

Yamashita shrugged, and the blanket slipped down around his arms. He used one hand to pull it back up, and took a sip from his beer. "Nothing your sorry ass could have done about it, I was seven."

"Still, I'm sorry, man," Ryo said, and Yamashita knew he meant it. "Maybe we should hand the case over to Kato and... the other one. I know they're incompetent, but, well, you know."

Chuckling despite himself, Yamashita nudged Ryo with a foot, "Shige's not incompetent. He went to university, unlike _some_ people."

Ryo snorted, "Yeah, and look what it got him. Horrible Kansai-ben and a best friend with verbal diarrhoea who spends more time talking to his cat than to human beings."

Yamashita laughed a little louder that time, and drained half of his beer.

He slept soundly that night, but it was the last good night's sleep he'd have for a long while. Dreams, nightmares he thought he'd long grown out of resurfaced, and suddenly he was seven years old again, bare feet padding down the hall to his parents' room and finding the door already open. The moonlight filtered in through the curtains like a cruel spotlight, illuminating blood so red it looked almost like paint. A hand hung limp over the edge of the bed, and young Tomohisa felt his own gasp more than he heard it as he reached out to hold it, that familiar, manicured hand that held his own tightly every day on the way to school. A single drop of blood dripped from his mother's thumb onto the floor, and he snatched his hand back with a soft cry that never came out. He felt his eyes drawn to that drop, and as soon as he focused on it, as if it had been waiting for that very moment, it began to grow, seeping out and out and out like a living being. Tomohisa felt it, wet around his feet, feet that couldn't move to run, and the blood just kept on coming, creeping over his socks and up his legs, inch by terrifying inch until he tore his eyes away and looked back up to the pale, cold hand, up her arm and across her shoulder and along her jawline until he met his mother's eyes, wide open and staring straight at him-

Yamashita shot bolt upright, gasping for breath. Sweat dampened his brow and his heart thundered painfully in his chest. Gradually, he took in the familiar walls of his bedroom, the clean sheets, the early morning light bathing everything in a soft, grey glow. Hime-chan, his tiny dog, had roused with him and clambered across his legs to reach his face, her wet tongue lapping at his cheeks and hiding the salty evidence of his distress before he had to see it himself. He scratched behind her ears fondly and led back down, letting her settle on his chest.

It was the same dream as the night before, and the night before that, and the night before that. Every night, the moment he closed his eyes, he regressed to his childhood and walked that path over and over again, only now it was so much worse. His memories may have faded, but his imagination was still as active as ever.

Grudgingly, he got out of bed, carefully depositing Hime-chan on the covers and letting her curl up in the warm spot he'd just vacated. He barely remembered falling asleep the night before, his mind had seemed to shut off before he'd even lay down, but he felt no more rested for it than he had seven hours ago when he'd come to bed. The sleeping pills his doctor had prescribed him were doing a good enough job of making him fall asleep, but weren't helping him feel any more rested. Rubbing tiredly at aching eyes, Yamashita thumped on the wall behind his bed with the side of his fist.

"Jin! Get up! You're going to be late again!"

Yamashita's room mate, Jin Akanishi, was an aspiring musician. He travelled around the country playing to small crowds in cramped, smokey live houses and on street corners, and he worked the local bars and DJ'd at clubs to pay his half of the rent. He was also absolutely impossible to get up in the morning, an unfortunate trait that had lost him just about every steady part-time job he'd ever gotten. The ones he didn't lose for sleeping with the wrong people, anyway.

"Jin!" He yelled again when there was no sound of movement, and winced as his own voice made his head throb, "Come on, or I'm not making breakfast!" There was a groan and a thud as Jin presumably shoved himself out of his own bed - Yamashita had never had the heart to ask if he did it on purpose or not - then came the familiar click of Jin's door opening for him to call back.

"I'm up, I'm up, stop yelling." He sounded rough, like he'd been drinking the night before, and Yamashita felt sorry for him for as long as it took him to realise he sounded exactly the same himself. "What's for breakfast?"

Slipping a t-shirt over his torso, Yamashita joined Jin in the living room, unsurprised to find him sprawled on the sofa with his duvet wrapped around his body like a cocoon. "I dunno. What's in the fridge?"

Jin shrugged, "Take-out. Beer. Dunno."

"Coffee, then?" Yamashita offered, and Jin's face lit up as best it could in agreement. He padded down the hallway, slightly unnerved by the fact that he had to reach out for purchase on the wall once or twice, and dumped a fair amount of top quality ground coffee beans into the machine. They may well have lived off of instant noodles and take-out, but coffee was something neither of them were willing to compromise on.

Soon, Yamashita had made it back into the living room with two steaming mugs of rich, sweet coffee without spilling any. The smell alone was already starting to clear his head, and he handed one to Jin, who immediately tried to inhale it and yelped when it burnt his tongue.

"It's hot," he supplied helpfully, and Jin sent him a withered look.

"Don't you have somewhere to be?"

"Don't _you_?" Yamashita countered, and Jin grumbled under his breath. His mother had called and left a message several days earlier asking him to drop by and help his younger brother move out, and as much as Jin adored his mother and would never say no to her, he really didn't do mornings.

"Where'd you go last night?" Jin asked, tactfully changing the subject.

Yamashita frowned, "I didn't go anywhere."

"Your shoes weren't there when I came in, though. They're always there." Jin took a tentative sip of his coffee again, and sighed happily when it didn't try and take out his oesophagus.

"They must have been. How drunk were you last night?"

Jin flushed and Yamashita knew he'd hit the nail on the head.

"I don't know why I'm still friends with you," Jin griped from behind his mug, "All I get is abuse."

"And coffee," Yamashita pointed out. "Without me here to pay half the rent, you'd still be living with your parents, then where would you take your girls?"

Jin shrugged again, and his duvet threatened to fall off. Yamashita hoped he was wearing something under there. "We could always go back to their place."

"Classy." Yamashita snorted and drained his cup, feeling much more alive for it. He left Jin slowly sipping at his own to dump it in the sink before heading to the bathroom to shower. Once he was clean and dressed, he cast his eyes around for his wallet and cellphone - which weren't by the phone where he'd left them when he got in from work the night before - and found them on the coffee table, underneath one of Jin's music magazines.

"Dammit, Jin, stop moving my stuff!"

"I didn't touch your stuff!" Jin shouted back from the bathroom, having shut himself in there as soon as Yamashita had finished, and Yamashita shook his head, equal parts exasperation and fondness.

By the time he was done getting ready, hair swept back from his face as he fixed his tie in the hall mirror, Jin had abandoned the duvet for a pair of sweatpants, hair wet from his own shower.

"Hey Pi," Jin said as he passed, and Yamashita hummed softly in response. 'Pi' was possibly the only thing Jin had enough effort to call him, shortening his already shorter nickname of 'Yamapi' (which had come from an unfortunate happening when he was just a rookie with his white shirts and a pair of Jin's red socks), but it never failed to make him smile.

"I won't be home tonight," Jin continued, and called the rest through his open bedroom door whilst he finished getting dressed, "Going out with Yuu. You should come, you look like you could do with a night off."

Yamashita hummed in thought, and Jin stuck his head around the door frame.

"Come on, you don't have any cases now, right? I thought you caught that fucked up freak trying to steal babies?" His blasé tone was horribly transparent, and when Jin shuddered visibly, _that_ part wasn't theatrics. Yamashita hadn't wanted Jin to find out about the case they'd been working on, but his friend had returned from Hokkaido just in time to see the unsavoury news coverage. He didn't think that in all the years they'd been friends, he'd ever seen Jin look so physically ill from something he hadn't ingested - or thought about ingesting.

"Yeah," Yamashita nodded, "We did." It had taken them more than long enough, and two other women had died, but they had him. The sheer depth and accuracy of forensics never failed to amaze him.

"So come out, relax a bit," Jin persisted, "And bring Ryo, he's always fun."

Yamashita nodded again at his reflection, then realised Jin couldn't see him, "I'll ask him. Where are we going?"

As Jin fired off the details - he could always remember things when partying was involved - Yamashita took in the dark circles under his eyes and the pallid colour in his cheeks with a sigh. Maybe some drinks with friends would do the trick.

-

That night, after a relatively tedious day of forms and paperwork, Yamashita and Ryo left their jackets and ties in the back of Ryo's car - who had driven today - and with a nod to the bouncer on the door, slipped behind him and into the club. It was small and dark, and a heavy layer of smoke covered everything, but it was familiar and it was quiet and it was just what Yamashita needed right now.

He left Ryo to hunt out Jin, and went to grab them some drinks.

"Yamapi!" The bartender smiled when he ordered, "Back so soon?"

"Uh, I'm sorry?" Yamashita questioned; he hadn't been out for well over a month, "I think you must be thinking of someone else, Kazu."

Kazuya Kamenashi, bartender, son of the owner and one of Jin and Yamashita's school friends, frowned gently, perfectly plucked eyebrows pulling together in the centre, "Are you feeling okay?"

Yamashita nodded, "Yeah, I'm fine. Just tired. Nothing a few of your beers won't cure." He smiled and Kazuya grinned back, handing him just that. The other man was always getting trouble from the more rowdy customers for being prettier than the other employees, whether it was in the form of banter, flirting or abuse, but he was never without a smile.

"I think your boys are over at the pool table," Kazuya offered, and Yamashita nodded his thanks and took Ryo his drink. Kazuya would put it on their tab and get the money out of them next time they dropped by if they were too drunk to remember to pay before they left.

Before he could find them, however, he was stopped by a long pair of legs and a narrow waist blocking his path. Looking up, Yamashita took in a delicately pretty face with high cheekbones and long dark hair that fell around her shoulders.

"Uh, hello," he said, nodding politely, and she smiled.

"Hey." Her voice was soft and a little husky, and when she spoke, she purred, "I know I said we should do it again sometime, but I didn't know you'd be quite so eager."

Yamashita blinked owlishly at her. "I'm sorry... Have we met?"

She laughed, the sound thick and rich like treacle. "Maybe we could go out back again, I'm sure _that_ would jog your memory."

"I'm sorry," he repeated, moving backwards as she stepped closer, "But I really do think you're mistaking me for someone else. I hope you have a nice evening." Without looking at her again, he beat a hasty retreat, barely hearing her indignant huff or the clack of her heels on the laminate flooring as she stalked away.

'His boys', as Kazuya had so nicely put it, were in the middle of a game when he found them, relieved to be in regular company again, and if the amount of red balls left on the pool table compared to yellow was anything to go by (six to one), Jin was playing red.

They played in teams after that, Jin happy to have someone half-decent at pool on his side whilst Shirota complained that his partner couldn't even reach the top of the table. Ryo thwacked him around the head with his cue and Shirota threatened to step on his head, then Yamashita stepped in and promised to take away their cues and their drinks if they couldn't behave themselves. They soon closed their mouths, although Ryo's glare was ferocious.

Four games later, and Yamashita and Jin were losing, three games to one. They'd never much hoped to win against their long-limbed, bar-dwelling friend anyway, despite his insistence that his handicap - Ryo growled - was holding him back and keeping him from playing his best. Yamashita was beginning to feel the effects of the steady stream of alcohol and laughed, leaning back against the wall with his cue between his hands. As he did, a girl who had been standing nearby with her back to him, chatting happily all this time, glanced over her shoulder and caught his eye. Smiling, he nodded politely but she curled her lip in distaste and tossed her hair, stalking away purposefully and dragging her friend behind her.

Yamashita blinked, and Yuu nudged him.

"What'd you do to get her panties in a twist?" He chuckled, watching out of the corner of his eye as Ryo took his shot.

Yamashita shrugged, "Nothing, I've never even seen her before."

"Pff, bitches," Yuu mused, "She's probably PMS-ing."

Yamashita laughed again and moved forward to take his shot, but couldn't shake the way her eyes had seemed startlingly familiar.

-

As much as Yamashita had hoped a night out with his friends would help settle him and his nerves, the next week proved just how wrong he was. Every night he felt like he slept longer, deeper, until he woke up not even remembering how he'd gotten to his room, but every morning without fail he had to physically drag himself out of bed, falling into the shower and feeling like he hadn't slept a wink. No amount of cold water and hot coffee could chase away the exhaustion taking up residence in his body, and to top it all off, the nightmares that he'd thought - hoped - would cease were still plaguing him. Yamashita was grateful that they never woke him before dawn, though.

Despite feeling like he could fall asleep on his feet, he'd agreed to meet Toma, one of his oldest and dearest friends, at their usual haunt for a drink or two while he was in town. Toma was never around much, always travelling here and there for this drama or that movie, so Yamashita wasn't about to turn down a chance to spend some time with him no matter how awful he felt.

It was early when they arrived at the bar, early enough that the door was still unmanned and there was next to no-one inside when Kazuya brought their drinks over to the table they'd chosen in the corner.

"So, tell me what you've been up to," Toma said when Kazuya had retreated behind the bar, "It's been too long!"

Yamashita smiled and tipped his head to one side. "Same old same old, you know how it is. We haven't had a big case for a while now, so there's just piles of paperwork to get through without any distractions."

Toma hummed quietly, "That all?"

Frowning, Yamashita nodded, "Why?"

"I don't know if it's escaped your notice, Tomo, but you look like shit."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Yamashita replied wryly, a smile in his voice that wasn't mirrored on Toma's face.

"I'm serious," Toma went on, "When was the last time you slept more for more than three hours out of twenty-four?"

"I sleep at least seven hours every night, if not more, and that's more than usual. Really, nothing's wrong."

Toma wrapped his hands around the base of his glass, smudging the droplets with his fingertips and leaned forwards. Yamashita studiously avoided his eyes for as long as he could handle, but Toma had always been able to worm his way inside Yamashita's personal space without even being that physically close, and it didn't take long for him to heave a resigned sigh.

"I just haven't been sleeping well, I guess, that's all. Bad case, bad dreams, just the-"

Yamashita paused mid-sentence as movement by the bar caught his eye - not all that strange for a bar, but the girl in question was gesturing rather animatedly while Kazuya and one of the bouncers - the larger, more unpleasant of the two - seemed to be trying to placate her without getting hit in the face. Toma followed his eyes and raised his eyebrows at the spectacle just as she waved wildly in their direction and Kazuya's eyebrows disappeared behind his fringe. He shook his head hard, several times, then his hands joined in the obvious denial of whatever it was she was saying to him.

"Maybe we should go help him out..." Toma said, and Yamashita stood determinedly. He hadn't made it more than four steps before the bouncer had crossed the floor and blocked his path.

"I'm sorry sir, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Yamashita paused, opened his mouth, then closed it again.

"I'm sorry?" He said eventually, disbelief and something else, something unpleasant, settling in his chest.

"I don't believe I was unclear, sir."

"You're asking me to leave?"

"I'm afraid so. We would also appreciate it if you stayed away from here in the future." The bouncer's face was impassive, firm, but there was something nasty dancing just around the edges.

"What? Why? What am I supposed to have done?" Yamashita asked, scarcely able to believe what was going on.

"I'd rather not discuss that with you here, sir. Let's just say that before you return, I hope you will learn to control yourself appropriately."

The patrons that had been slowly filtering in since they arrived were starting to turn and stare at the commotion, and Toma nudged Yamashita's elbow gently.

"Come on, Tomo, let's just go. We don't want to cause trouble."

Yamashita opened his mouth again, then sighed heavily. As always, Toma was right, and it wouldn't do any good for him to try and argue whatever case they seemed to believe they had - that would only get them forcefully ejected from the premises, and that wasn't something he ever wished to have to experience.

"Okay, okay," he said to the bouncer, expression appropriately apologetic, "I'm sorry for any trouble I might've caused you."

"Thank you sir. I'll see you to the door."

As they passed the bar, Yamashita glanced up and saw the girl still standing next to the bar. There was a nasty purple bruise blossoming across the side of her face that he'd been unable to see from the angle she was standing at before, and her lip was broken in two places. He looked away quickly, but not before he'd seen the venomous look in her eyes.

"What... Do they think _I_ did that?" Yamashita murmured once they were alone outside, voice soft with incredulity.

Toma shrugged, "I don't know. Looks that way."

He'd started to walk towards the car, but Yamashita stopped and turned towards Toma, mouth set in a grim line. "Do you think I did it?"

Toma's eyes went wide, "Of course not!"

Relief flooded Yamashita's body, until Toma fixed him with a heavy look.

"Did you?"

"What!? I- No!" He exclaimed, and Toma held up both hands before he had a chance to feel too betrayed.

"Hey, I'm just making sure, okay?"

Yamashita huffed theatrically, then jumped when the door to the bar slammed against the wall and Kazuya flew out of it.

"I'm so sorry, Pi! There was nothing I could do... She was saying-" He glanced around, then jogged a little closer before continuing in a much quieter tone, for their ears only. "She was saying that you'd... you'd done that to her face when she wouldn't sleep with you."

"What?" Yamashita breathed, feeling a little like a stuck record but unable to think of anything else to say, "I would never... Why would she say that? I don't even know her!"

Kazuya's face turned from dejected to confused in the blink of an eye, "You don't remember her? Weren't you here with her yesterday?"

-

It was more than a little unnerving for Yamashita to learn that there was someone who looked enough like him to fool his friends from a distance walking around the city, especially when he didn't appear to be a very nice man. Jin had thought it was hysterically funny right up until he'd found out that the doppelgänger was prone to taking his fists to women, then suddenly it wasn't so amusing any more. He wasn't given too much time to worry about it though, because two days later he was awoken at six-thirty in the morning with a throbbing head, aching limbs and a barked order down his phone to get his ass out of bed _right_ now and bring Nishikido to an address in Setagaya, on the outskirts of the city.

The address turned out to be a club, and the crime scene wasn't so much inside the club as it was in the alley taped off beside it. Yamashita's heart sank the moment he saw the sheet covering what could only be a body.

"Shit," Ryo vocalised for them both.

"Sorry for waking you boys from your beauty sleep," Yuri Chinen, the coroner's little prodigy, grinned, far too bright for someone who spends the majority of his day surrounded by dead people. There was something a little sinister about that kid, but his eyes were always shining and he never had a bad word to say to them. Still, he gave Yamashita the creeps.

Chinen turned towards the body and carefully peeled back the sheet. "Vic is female, early- to mid-twenties, at first glance she seems to have had her neck broken." As her face was revealed, both detectives sucked in a breath, and Ryo turned away. "Oh, yeah, and she was beaten to a pulp first.

"Looks like he - we're assuming our guy is male, to have done so much damage; it takes considerable strength to be able to snap the spinal cord like that - uh, he dislocated her jaw, fractured her cheekbone, and her nose is totally shattered. She was probably already unconscious by the time he broke her neck."

Ryo let out a long, shaking breath, "Looks like we've got ourselves an angry one. What d'you think, scorned spouse?"

"Could be," Yamashita nodded, carefully looking anywhere but at the body now, "He did ruin her face first. Definitely passionate." He turned back towards Chinen, who was staying out of the way now that the preliminary examination had been done to let them bag the body and search out any lingering evidence. "Do we have an ID?"

-

"Haruka Matsushita, 21 years old." Ryo counted off the facts on his fingers, "Single, lives alone, moved to Tokyo from Fukuoka when she finished school. No trace of a significant other, though, and the friends I spoke to had never heard of a boyfriend. But the two of them that were out with her last night said she'd told them she'd met a guy and that they should go back home without her. Secret boyfriend, maybe?"

Yamashita hummed softly, twirling a rubber band between his fingers. "No. If he was secret, she wouldn't have mentioned him at all. She'd have had some other excuse already made up, like every other time she'd gone to meet with him."

Ryo snorted. "You're quite the expert."

Lifting his eyes from his hands to meet Ryo's briefly, Yamashita nonchalantly flicked the band at Ryo's head before he got to his feet. His head spun, vision swimming for a moment before he steadied himself on the back of the chair, and Ryo frowned.

"You alright?"

"Fine," he replied automatically. "He got her into the alley without causing any kind of commotion, so she trusted him. Either he was someone she knew-"

Ryo shook his head, "The girls said she didn't know him when they asked her."

"-Or she must have had a good reason for putting her faith in him. Maybe he had an upstanding job, maybe he seemed genuine, like a doctor or a teacher."

Ryo scoffed, rolling his eyes, "Or, maybe he lied. After two or three drinks, girls'll believe anything."

"And you'd know, would you?"

Ryo threw the rubber band back, and it bounced off Yamashita's shoulder, whose mouth twitched despite the dire circumstances.

"Well, how about we go and talk to the club owner again, try and get ahold of a few of his staff? Someone must have seen _something_."

-

Dishearteningly, no-one _had_ seen anything. Very few of the people the detectives spoke to even remembered seeing Matsushita, and the ones that did could only place her with her friends in the hours before her murder. The only account they had to go on was one of the bouncers, who remembered the tiny gold dress she'd been wearing, and thought he'd seen her leaving with a figure wearing a black hooded jacket. He'd only seen them from the back, though, and because the other person - their only suspect - had their hood pulled up, they didn't even have a hair colour to work with.

To make matters worse, three days later another body was found, and two nights after that, another. Megumi Fubuki and Kaede Nakayama had both sustained almost identical injuries, and were both dumped in an alley outside a club. And what had before been a relatively simple - all things considered - one-night-stand gone wrong, suddenly became something far more sinister.

So far, all three clubs had been different, but they couldn't guarantee that the murderer - because it was almost certainly one person - wouldn't return to the scenes, either to hunt again or to relive the moment. All three areas were under surveillance, but they had next to nothing to go on, as a man in his mid-twenties, possibly wearing a hooded jacket, covered around ninety percent of the male patrons walking through the doors every night. They did seem to be getting closer to home, though. Megumi's body had been found outside a relatively small, but bustling nightclub in Asakusa that backed onto the Sumida River, and Kaede, closer still, near a terribly upmarket club in Ginza. Either their perpetrator was getting lazier and travelling less, or braver, hitting the bigger clubs now that he'd gotten a taste for it.

Yamashita, who usually devoted every possible moment to whatever case he was working on, was finding it harder and harder to concentrate. Whenever he sat down for more than a few minutes, his eyelids would begin to droop, begging him to sleep just for a few minutes, to rest, to close his eyes and drift off, even if it was only for a moment. Several times, Ryo had woken him up with a swift kick to the back of his chair, or a heavy folder or two dropped on his hands. It was getting old pretty quickly, but even an immeasurable amount of caffeine wasn't doing the trick now. Several nights before, he was sure Jin must have dragged him to bed, because the last thing he remembered was sipping at a cup of green tea on the sofa, valiantly hoping it would help him sleep a little better, then waking up in his bed, feeling like death warmed over. In between, he could remember nasty flashes of dreams, nightmares, his hands curling around soft, yielding flesh, his fists beating, his fingers choking and a deep, heavy pounding in the base of his skull. He'd woken up with another splitting headache, hands sore from where he'd been clenching them in his sleep.

He had even taken to wearing sunglasses everywhere, regardless of the weather outside. No matter how dreary the day promised to be, the daylight was too much for his eyes, and any kind of lengthened exposure to it made him feel like his entire head was filled to bursting. Ryo mocked him for it mercilessly, but he much preferred that to the concerned faces on his co-workers every time he entered the building. They'd never say anything to his face about it, but they didn't have to. At first he'd been touched that they worried about his health, but the longer it had gone on, the more their frowns and sympathetic little smiles and magically appearing cups of coffee were starting to get irritating.

Despite their endless searching and questioning, they were still getting nowhere with the case. The three girls seemed completely unconnected, from different hometowns and families and backgrounds, all moving in different circles with different hobbies and dreams for the future. They couldn't find a thing to tie them together, except for the fact that they were all in Tokyo partying the night they died. Thus far, they had managed to keep it out of the media's hands, but Yamashita was dreading the outcry and panic that would undoubtedly arise as soon as word got out that there was a serial killer out there working out of nightclubs. They simply didn't have the resources to spare to keep every single club in Tokyo under careful watch, but no-one would be happy being told they weren't important enough to warrant some kind of surveillance, especially not when lives were being held in the balance.

This lack of available resources was the reason Yamashita had volunteered to stay on late to work his way through four hours of security tape from the club in Ginza in the vain hope that he'd spot something useful. It wasn't like he was getting any rest by going to bed early, so he didn't see any reason not to stay up a little later whilst doing something useful.

However, staying up a little later proved to be far easier said than done, and half an hour into the first tape, Yamashita felt his eyelids becoming heavy. He took a long swig of his coffee, grimaced when the cold liquid hit his tongue, and shoved the cup away, resting his chin firmly on his palms. Dark images flickered across the screen, people dancing, drinking, lights flashing every now and then to the pulse of the beat that he'd muted early on.

Yawning and scrubbing at his eyes, Yamashita switched to a new tape, this time from the security camera covering the hall leading towards the bathrooms. There wasn't a lot of activity, but it was infinitely more bearable than the ones covering the bar and the dance floor. His eyelids began to sting as he strained them trying to focus on the faces of the patrons wandering up and down the hall - usually alone, sometimes in pairs - and he tried to make out their clothes instead. Matsushita had been wearing a sparkling gold dress, not the kind of thing that was easy to miss, even on a grainy security tape.

Most of the girls wore very little, although which parts of their bodies they chose to expose varied from person to person. The men were much more predictable, usually wearing jeans topped off with a shirt or t-shirt. Yamashita couldn't remember the last time he'd worn a pair of jeans, usually clad in his pressed trousers for work or donning sweatpants for comfort when he was at home. It made him want to take some time off, but even if he could, he'd probably only spend it sleeping.

He was just starting to think of how good sleep sounded right now when something caught his eye on the screen. He couldn't put his finger on why the back of a slender figure with a pretty run-of-the-mill mop of dark hair and leather jacket caught his eye, if not for the dim realisation that he had a jacket just like it (never mind that it hadn't seen the light of day for months), but he kept watching anyway until he returned from the bathroom and was facing the camera.

Yamashita blinked, ran a hand over his eyes and blinked again. It was uncanny. If he hadn't remembered going home after work that night, he might have been fooled himself. The guy looked _just_ like him, even had a similar hairstyle. There was more product in it than Yamashita would ever use on his own - that was more Jin's style - and he walked with a slight swagger as opposed to Yamashita's comfortable lope, but it really was almost like looking into a mirror, even on a screen this poor.

The cogs in his head whirred tiredly, and he couldn't resist resting his cheek on the desk, just while he thought. This guy had to be the one that had allegedly given a young girl a black eye and a bloody lip, and now here he was the night Matsushita was murdered.

A sickening feeling settled in Yamashita's stomach as his mind began to shut down, and he closed his eyes against the offending brightness of the monitor. There was a serial killer out there, and if Yamashita trusted his gut feeling, that murderer was wearing his face.

 

-

_  
She wasn't wonderfully attractive, but her voice was soft and warm where it murmured in his ear. Her jewellery sang to him as she moved, so many chains and pendants and earrings sparkling silver in the moonlight that would look just beautiful glinting and twinkling from beneath a final varnish of blood. He slid his hands beneath her clothes, eager but careful. He'd learned now that if he pushed too hard, or too fast, then they broke too soon, and an unfinished task grated on his fragile nerves like stone on a chalkboard._

_But there were footsteps, getting closer and closer, and a voice, "Mika-chan?"_

_She turned towards the sound and he tamped down on the urge to yank her back to him by her hair. Instead, he smoothed his fingers through it so that she leaned into the touch and purred like a kitten, giving him enough time to turn and growl heatedly at the intruder._

_"Get lost," he snarled, deep and primal, and the other girl's eyes widened, a tiny squeak escaping before she scampered away._

_**That's right, little mouse. Run.** _

_Mika - he'd never bothered to find out her name before - was even better than he'd hoped, warm and agreeable in every way imaginable, and when the time finally came, she was just as quietly responsive when he slid his knife home, sharpened to perfection so that the only sound that escaped from her was a soft, shocked gasp, too stunned to do anything else. He could see her mind struggling to figure out what was happening to her even as her blood flowed thick and rich over his hands and her mouth worked soundlessly as the life slipped from her.  
_  
-

Yamashita awoke with a start, a cold sweat on the back of his neck and his clothes stuck to his body. Blood flashed before his eyes, but when he ripped the covers away, there was nothing. He breathed a long sigh of relief, but his heart was still pounding in his chest, terrified by the sheer intensity his dreams had acquired since he'd started working on this case. Hime-chan whined softly at her master's discomfort and nudged at his hand, but the effort it took to lift it to pet her was too great. Every part of his body felt like it had been filled with lead, weighing him down and forcing him into the mattress, and Yamashita groaned in frustration. As soon as this case was over, he was going to take a long overdue vacation. He'd go down to the sea with his surfboard, sleep to his heart's content with the sounds of the ocean surrounding him, then come daylight he'd ride his worries away on the waves.

He managed to pull himself out of bed and was smiling at the memory of the sun on his face and the sand between his toes when he was yanked from his fantasies by the obnoxious trill of his cellphone.

"Nngh. What?" He grunted, eyes only open enough for him to avoid tripping over Hime-chan as he headed towards the bathroom.

"Pi," It was Ryo's voice on the end of the line, and he didn't sound happy. "Roppongi. We've got another one."

-

The moment Yamashita stepped into the alley, plan grey brick and concrete stretching on before him, he felt an eerie sense of déjà vu wash over him. They hadn't washed away the blood yet, and the puddle of red spread out in a wide circle around the exposed body of a girl, clothes hiked up and slouched like a rag doll. The closer he got, the tighter his chest felt, as if an invisible hand had wrapped around his throat and was slowly choking the breath from him. Long brown hair pooled around her, matted with dried blood, pale skin marred only by smudged lipstick and smears of mascara, and finally, there was the glint of silver underneath all that blood. Jewellery, too much jewellery.

_Mika._

Yamashita turned away, and vomited.

"Jesus, man, are you okay?"

Straightening and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, Yamashita nodded despite the way his stomach was still churning.

"You-" he started, then cleared his throat when his voice came out as barely a whisper, "You think this is our guy?"

_Please say no, please, please say no..._

"Mmhmm," Ryo shifted to the side, and Yamashita appreciated the subtle change in direction so that he wouldn't have to look at the body, "No visual injuries - except for the obvious one, of course - but the location and type of woman are identical. I think he's learning to control himself, instead of lashing out before he's..." Here, Ryo paused and looked away, "Taken his enjoyment."

Yamashita's stomach turned over again and he breathed long and deep to try and settle it. "How about her neck?"

"Fine," Chinen clarified from where he was bent over the body, "Just one single slice through the femoral artery, clean but angled, with no other immediate visual abrasions. She'd have fainted pretty quickly from the blood loss, and been dead within a few minutes. Didn't stand a chance."

"The bastard's _experimenting,_ " Ryo spat, but Yamashita wasn't listening any more. He had a murder weapon to find.

Half way through his circle of the alley, Ryo caught up with him.

"Pi?" He said, "Pi, where are you going? Pi!"

Once he'd walked to the end of the alley and back again, Yamashita let his feet do the rest, carefully ignoring all logic and sense and self-preservation. If this worked, well. He didn't want to think about what it could mean if this worked. Ryo followed him as he wandered out into the street, silent now but for the odd hushed, "What the fuck, man..." and Yamashita turned left, away from the entrance to the club, eyes fixed firmly ahead. Left again, back out when it didn't feel quite right, and then again, another left, a little further up. Halfway down this alley was an innocuous-looking, clean, white dumpster, and Yamashita headed for it like a homing missile.

"Give me a leg up," he ordered. Ryo did as he was told without question or argument, but Yamashita was hardly in the mood to appreciate it. Holding onto the edge with one hand, he peered over the top, then jumped back down and walked around to the back instead, where he dropped to his knees and began to rummage through the pile of black refuse sacks piled up against the wall. One, two, three bags down and there it was, silver-stained-red. His heart sank.

Lifting it up, he held it out for Ryo to see.

"What the... Oh shit, gloves!" Ryo exclaimed, and Yamashita belatedly realised that in his haste - if it could be called that - he'd forgotten to put on his gloves. Any fingerprints that may have been on the hilt would now be compromised, unless they got terribly, terribly lucky.

He swore.

Ryo reached into his back pocket and produced a packet containing a fresh pair, then slipped one on to take hold of the knife gingerly.

"How did you do that?" He breathed, staring straight at the razor-sharp blade, "How did you know it was here?"

Yamashita wanted to throw up again.

"I don't know."

He was more than happy to be rid of the knife when Ryo handed it over to one of the forensics working on the scene, and two more of them scuttled off to process the area where they'd found the knife, too.

"By the way," Ryo asked, peeling off his glove and shoving it back into his pocket, "Did you have any luck with those security tapes last night?"

"Oh, I-" Yamashita paused, and swallowed. After everything that had just happened, now really didn't seem like a good time to tell Ryo about the face he'd seen on the security tapes last night, "No, nothing."

Ryo frowned, but it was concerned, not troubled. ""You really don't look too hot. I mean, you could never hope to hold a candle to me," He smirked, and Yamashita forced a chuckle, trying to focus through the fuzzy blur around the edge of his vision, "But you really don't look like you'll be much good today."

Yamashita avoided pointing out that he'd led them to the knife, and just nodded mutely.

"Is Jin in town? Maybe you should call him up when we get back to the station, get him to take you home. Chill for a bit, watch a movie, get some rest."

"Yeah," Yamashita replied, grateful for the opportunity to get out of here and sort his head out, "Yeah, I think I will."

-

But before he'd even made it home, things suddenly got a whole lot worse.

They'd been lucky enough to come across a witness who had seen the man Mika Takashima had left the club with. Emi Nishikawa had gone looking for her friend and had found the couple in the very alley they'd found Mika's body abandoned in, but Mika had seemed to be just as into whatever he had planned as he was, so she had left as soon as the man turned feral eyes on her. It was just too much of a coincidence to ignore.

She had come back to the station, and the men on duty had rapidly assembled a line-up of men being held in their cells that could fit the vague description she'd given them. They weren't really hoping to get lucky, but hoped she'd at least be able to narrow down the description of their guy a little more.

Yamashita had followed them back to the station in his own car, but it took him twice as long because he kept almost nodding off at the wheel and opted to drive especially slowly to avoid any accidents. By the time he'd parked up and gone inside to wait for Jin - who promised he was on his way - Emi had already been taken in to view their haphazard line-up. He hadn't tried to convince Ryo to let him oversee it too; he tried to tell himself it was because he was too tired, too eager for the rest that was awaiting him, but he couldn't hide the truth from himself. He didn't want her to see his face.

Jin arrived just as he was finishing his third cup of coffee in under ten minutes - anything just to keep his eyes open - and followed Yamashita down the hall so that he could tell Ryo he was leaving for the day. The first time Jin had gotten all the way from the front desk to their offices in the back, Yamashita had questioned how. Jin had just waggled his eyebrows, pursed his lips in Yamashita's direction in an over-exaggerated kiss, and flashed the visitor's pass he'd been given. The girl on the front desk had never looked at him in quite the same way ever again.

"Yo," He said softly, letting his hair fall into his eyes as he poked his head around the door and into the room where Ryo was seated with Emi and Detective Superintendent Tsubasa, "Any luck?"

Ryo sighed. "Hey. Nah, nothing, Nishikawa-san - Nishikawa-san, this is Tomohisa Yamashita, the other detective on the case - says she'll keep trying for us, though."

Yamashita forced a slight smile and inclined his head as the girl turned to bow. He let out a sigh of relief when nothing else happened, his heart suddenly so light he thought it might try and float away. Then she looked up, and gasped.

"You." She breathed, and Yamashita felt his world come crashing down.

Emi stepped back, as far as she could without making a spectacle, and turned back to Ryo with wide eyes.

"He's the one I saw, last night," she said, quietly.

"Eh?" Ryo blurted, face the picture of ignorance, and Tsubasa looked up from the paperwork he'd been filling out.

"I think you must be mistaken, Nishikawa-san."

She shook her head firmly. "I'm sure it was him. I remember thinking," here, she blushed, "That he was really good looking, when Mika-chan left with him. Until he shouted at me."

Yamashita's mind was working on overdrive even whilst his body was threatening to shut down. He remembered watching tape after tape of people in the very first club, remembered, with a lurch, his own face on the monitor, remembered resting his head on the desk for just a moment... and remembered waking up in his own bed, the remnants of a nightmare hovering around the edges of his conscious. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember a thing in between. He stood, silent, for a long, agonising moment until Tsubasa turned towards him, eyes questioning. Ryo was studiously avoiding his gaze, and that was possibly even worse.

"I've never even met the girl!" He exclaimed, "This- I- Why would I kill her? Why would I kill _anyone_?!"

"I think I'd like to leave now, Nishikido-san, Tsubasa-san" Emi said softly, her voice shaking as she spoke. Ryo sighed again helplessly and nodded.

"No!" Yamashita burst, his tone taking on a desperate edge, "Don't, please, we need your help. I didn't do this, I swear, I was at work late last night then I went home, I swear it!" He did, he did, he _had_ to have done.

Jin moved behind him so that he was more than just a shoulder in the doorway, "He's telling the truth. He was at home with me the whole time."

Yamashita tamped down on the urge to throw his arms around his friend's neck, and thought his knees might give out from the force of the relief he felt coarsing through him like a tidal wave.

"You see?" Ryo said, obviously relieved Jin was there to back up his story. Whether Ryo trusted him or not would have been irrelevant if they had a witness and he had no alibi.

"I-I'm sorry, Yamashita-san." Emi bowed her head, "It was dark. I must be confused."

Yamashita shook his head and waved his hand in dismissal, not trusting his voice to not betray him in some way.

-

Jin was quiet during the drive, but Yamashita was grateful for the peace. It was only when they'd gotten home that Jin finally spoke.

"So, are you going to tell me what's going on?"

Yamashita frowned, and the movement made him want to close his eyes. Everything was so bright. "You know we're not supposed to talk about our cases..."

"That's not what I mean, and you know it." Jin's voice was just this side of harsh, and Yamashita wasn't used to having it directed towards him like that. He could feel the icy fingers of panic starting to claw at him again as Jin stared at him, gaze steady.

"What are you talking about?"

"Pi," Jin said firmly, with an edge of worry beginning to creep in, "You didn't come home last night."

"...What?"

Jin flopped down on the sofa with a huff. "Look, I just lied to the police for you, the least you can do is tell me where you were."

Yamashita's mouth worked soundlessly as he searched for something, _anything_ in the gap in his mind between the times he'd fallen asleep at his desk and woken up again eight hours later, safe in his bed. Anything, locking up his office, getting on the train to come home, fishing his keys out of his pocket... But there was nothing. Just a few flashes of skin, a girl, and blood, everywhere.

"Pi?" Jin asked again, concern definitely winning out this time, "Where did you go?"

"I... I don't know," Yamashita whispered, his insides turning cold, "I can't remember..."

"What? Are you okay? I know you're not sleeping well, and you're up at all hours of the night, but... Is something wrong? Is there something else?"

"I'm f-" Yamashita bit back his automatic response, and paused. He was feeling terribly light headed, despite being sat down already, and he closed his eyes to try and get some sense of purchase. "No, not really, I... I'm scared, Jin. Things keep getting more and more fucked and I don't know what's going on." Yamashita brought his hands up to cover his face, head tipping back to rest against the back of the sofa where the cushions were heavenly-soft behind him. "I'm having nightmares, dreaming that I'm doing terrible things to people..." Each word was getting harder to think of, harder to pronounce, like someone had injected him with a strong anaesthetic and his tongue was swelling to the size of a golf ball, "Horrible, unforgivable things... I'm forgetting things, and I'm always so tired, Jin..." Even as he said it, Yamashita's eyelids were drooping, invisible hands reaching out and pulling him under no matter how hard he tried to resist. "No matter how long I sleep, I'm always so... so tired..."

-  
 _  
"As if **you'd** ever understand." Yamashita's lip curled in distaste, and Jin's hackles rose visibly._

_"Oh, so now I'm a moron too?!"_

_"Why do you think I'm still here? Living with a failure. Couldn't succeed at anything else so you fell back on being a **musician** , and you couldn't manage that, either. You're great for my ego, Akanishi."_

_When Jin looked at him, eyes brimming over with hurt, with betrayal, he couldn't hide the satisfaction it filled him with. He wasn't really trying too hard, though._

_-_

_"What the **fuck** is your problem?! I can't believe I lied to the fucking **police** for you, you're such a- a-" Jin stuttered, clearly racking his brains for a suitable enough word._

_"Please, don't strain yourself. I wouldn't want it to hurt."_

_"What's **wrong** with you? Why are you being like this?!"_

_"Like what? Like a human?!" Yamashita yelled, blood suddenly boiling. "Like I'm not some snivelling little mild-mannered idiot pandering to anyone who looks at me the right way? Like I've got a backbone?!_

_"Like an asshole!"_

_-_

_"This isn't you, Pi! You're not like this! I don't want to believe you hurt those girls, I don't, but like this I can't help but think..."_

_"So what if I did?" Yamashita drawled, "You have no proof. Would you turn in your best friend for murder?"_

_Jin looked away, and Yamashita sneered._

_"Of course you wouldn't. Always so fucking loyal, Akanishi, like a puppy that keeps coming back no matter how many times you kick it. Pathetic."_

_A fist collided with his face, and while he was still rebounding from the force of it, the door slammed._

_He smiled._

_**One down.** _

-

Yamashita pried his eyelids open, but found himself confronted with just as much darkness as there had been before he awoke. It was quiet, too, too quiet, and it took all of his energy to push himself up into a sitting position. If the ache in his thigh was any indication, his cellphone had still been in his pocket when he fell asleep, and he fished it out, still straining for any sign of life in the apartment.

The light from his phone was painful, and he squinted at it through cracked eyes.

_1:37AM_

He groaned. When was the last time he'd even seen midnight? Oh shit, and he'd fallen asleep in the middle of a conversation, too. Jin was going to be pissed.

Yamashita yawned widely, and his jaw throbbed. Lifting a hand to it, he pressed a fingertip to the skin and white hot pain shot through his face. He had a vague memory - a dream, maybe - of fighting with Jin, of saying cruel things that he could never even remember _thinking_ before, and Jin had... Had he left? It certainly seemed that way from the silence and darkness of their apartment; Jin rarely slept before three in the morning.

Punching in Jin's number, Yamashita slumped down into the cushions as it rang, over and over until switching to voicemail. Ending the call, he tried again. On the third try, someone picked up, and Jin muttered a quick "Stop calling me" before hanging up on him.

He must be _really_ pissed. Yamashita struggled to remember what he'd said, what had happened after they returned home from the station, but all he could remember clearly was dozing off mid-sentence, then waking again hours later. Everything in between was fuzzy and distorted, like he was trying to focus through frosted glass or thick syrup, and the details refused to come to him.

\- _Talk to me,_ \- he typed, - _please._ -

\- _Why?_ \- Jin replied simply.

\- _Did I upset you? I don't remember what happened._ -

- _Can't use the same excuse twice._ -

A second message arrived just as Yamashita was reading the first.

\- _Asshole._ -

It hurt when he smiled, serving as a brutal reminder of just how much Jin hadn't appreciated everything he'd been saying, but then there were keys in the lock, and Jin flicked the overhead light on. Yamashita grimaced and covered his eyes with a hand, but even that wasn't enough to block out the light completely.

"I'm back," he muttered, clearly still in a bad mood, but he was here and that was a start.

"Welcome home," Yamashita replied, and tried to ignore the throb starting up in his temples.

"I'm only here because I trust you," Jin told him, and Yamashita noticed he hadn't taken off his shoes or jacket yet, and had yet to move away from the door. "But I'm going to stand over here."

"Jin..."

"Seriously, I don't... I'm really worried about you, Pi. You're not yourself. The things you said to me..." Jin looked down and away, and folded his arms across his chest. "It wasn't you. Maybe it's just the lack of sleep, but-"

"I'm getting plenty of sleep," Yamashita interjected, "It just isn't doing any _good._ "

Jin scoffed. "You're disappearing at all hours of the night, and even I don't hear you come in. How much sleep are you getting every day, an hour, two? No wonder you're always so exhausted."

"But I..." Yamashita murmured. As if it had been waiting for this moment, the fog surrounding his memories began to clear, snippets of time flashing behind his eyes. "I don't... I can't..."

"I think... I think you need to get some help, Pi, talk to someone. Before, you said you were scared, scared o-of yourself, and... I think I'm a little scared of you too."

Horrific realisation began to dawn on him, and Yamashita felt the churning of disgusted nausea in his stomach as things started to come together, the denial he'd been hiding behind for so long finally being swept away like old, dusty cobwebs. The restless nights, being thrown out of the bar, the dreams, the knife, his face on the cameras and now the empty patches of memory, slowly, slowly being filled with images of girls, so many girls, girls they hadn't even found yet dancing with him, writhing over him, dying beneath him... "No..."

Everything around him was coming together and falling apart simultaneously, tugging him this way and that between the memories, the facts, the impossible.

"No, I... I can't, I would never..." Yamashita's voice was gradually getting more panicked, and he brought his hands up to cover his face again, vainly hoping that hiding his eyes will stop the terrible, gut-wrenching scenes of pain and mutilation and death from playing out across his mind's eye. "No... no..."

His stomach convulsed again, harder, tighter this time, then there were strong arms around him, lifting him and steering him through the apartment until he felt cool porcelain beneath his feet, his knees.

He barely noticed the splash of icy water across his face once he was done emptying the contents of his stomach, but when he felt an unnerving urge to laugh bubbling up in his throat, Yamashita whipped his head up to look at his bedraggled appearance in the mirror.

Slowly, his reflection smiled.

-

Yamashita stirred, gradually coming to and lifting his chin from where it had been slumped against his chest. He moved to stretch his arms out of habit, to release the knot of tension in his upper back, but when he tried to move, he couldn't. Things cleared much more quickly after that, and after a few moments of testing his limbs, he found himself tied rather securely to a dining chair.

Despite the ache in his muscles, though, he actually felt better than he had in a long time. The light didn't hurt his eyes anywhere near as much as usual, and there wasn't so much as a trace of the fog that he'd begun to forget wasn't supposed to be hanging around his head all the time.

But there was still the matter of why he was tied to a chair.

"Jin?" He called out, craning his neck to try and see into the kitchen, "Hello?"

There was a soft rustle from the other side of the room, and Jin's sleep-mussed hair appeared over the back of the sofa. He blinked owlishly in Yamashita's direction, then seemed to catch himself, sitting up quickly and regarding him with a cool - if slightly drowsy - expression.

"You're awake."

Yamashita hummed affirmatively, "I'm also tied to a chair. What happened?"

"You passed out on me, in the bathroom. I didn't want to take my chances."

"Oh," He replied simply, "Well... Do you think you could untie me now? My legs are cramping up."

Jin's expression was wary, to say the least, and Yamashita couldn't say he blamed him.

"Do you think that's a good idea?"

"I'm fine, I promise, I'm all me." Jin frowned sceptically, and Yamashita lifted his head clearly, "Look at me, come on."

Jin slowly came closer and peered into Yamashita's eyes, forehead creased in concentration.

"See?" Yamashita made a conscious effort to smile, "I'm okay. Please, just let me stretch my legs for a minute then you can tie me back up if it'll make you feel better."

Jin sighed, and he knew that he'd convinced him. "Well... I guess it couldn't hurt. But only for a minute..." He untied Yamashita's feet first and then, once he was certain the other man wasn't going to try and kick him in the face, freed his hands, too.

Yamashita grinned gratefully, stretching his arms up and making an appropriately content sound. Then, he gathered all of the strength he could muster, and punched Jin hard in the face. His friend stumbled to the floor with a shout of pain, hands flying up to protect his face, and before he could retaliate Yamashita had him pinned down, his forearm pressed firmly across Jin's throat. Jin's eyes were wide, terrified as he gasped for breath that wasn't coming, pupils dilated until there was almost no colour left around the outside. He tried to thrash, to buck Yamashita's body off of him, but Yamashita's hold on him was unforgiving, and it wasn't long until the life began to fade from his eyes.

Eventually, Jin slumped back against the floor, unconscious. Yamashita was tempted to finish the job, adrenaline pumping fast and addictive through his veins, but he had to be careful now. One wrong move, and everything he'd been working so hard for could all go to hell.

Tonight, he was going to have a little fun instead.

-

Yamashita groaned, rolling onto his side, and felt his leg throb. He felt like death warmed over, body aching like he'd spent the past twenty four hours being beaten to a pulp, head throbbing with a hangover like nothing he'd ever felt before, a stiffness to him that could only come from - he pried his eyes open - _shit_. Sleeping on the pavement. He grimaced and forced himself into a sitting position, muscles screaming in protest, and felt something cool and wet drip from his cheek. Then he saw it.

Her.

Sprawled not two feet away from him was the body of what may once have been an attractive blonde foreigner. Except now, there was barely enough left to identify her. Her face had been mutilated beyond recognition, strips of skin and flesh hanging from her skull like a macabre piece of art. Her arms, legs, and neck had all been broken, if the angles they were lying at were any indication, and her clothes had been stripped from her body to reveal more of that bloody, nightmarish canvas of flesh. There was a trickle of images in his head, projections, memories, and when Yamashita sucked in a horrified breath, the stench of blood was unbearable. She'd been _alive_ when he'd done this. He tasted bile, and the urge to feel that scarlet fluid dripping between his fingers was suddenly overwhelmingly strong. Clothes sodden with gore stuck to him like a second skin as he tried to scramble away, white-hot pain shooting through his leg from a deep gash in his left thigh, and his own blood had mingled with hers, his hands dipped in a heady cocktail of human life.

It was a threat. _Look what I **could** be doing. Be grateful._

Too much, it was just too much, too much to take in, to process, to handle. Slick hands scrabbled through his pockets for his cellphone, punching in that number that he knew better than his own, and there was more, a fist, his arm pressed against Jin's neck, _oh God, oh God, please pick up, please, plea-_

_"H-hello?"_

"Jin! Oh my God, Jin, you're alive, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, please, you have to come get me, please," Yamashita babbled, filled with equal parts relief and terror. There were tears on his cheeks that he hadn't noticed shedding, and he barely recognised the sound of his own voice.

 _"Pi?"_ Jin's own voice was hoarse, _"Is that you?"_

"Yes, it's me, I promise, listen, please, you need to come get me, I- he- I- something terrible's happened. Please come, please, I can't- please, Jin-"

_"Hey, calm down. Just breathe and listen to me, okay?"_

Yamashita closed his mouth and sucked in a long breath through his nose, then choked on the stench of blood. He dragged himself further away, gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg, and tried again.

 _"Where are you?"_ Jin was asking, _"Just tell me where you are and I'll be there as soon as I can."_

"I..." Yamashita cast his eyes around, "I don't know."

A few old, long-forgotten shipping containers sat innocuously to his right, followed by a seemingly never-ending stretch of concrete, surrounded by trees and foliage in the distance. Glad to have something to focus his attentions on, Yamashita moved further away from the body until he could lean up against one of the containers, and continued to draw in long, deep breaths through his mouth until the sickening smell had faded, being replaced by another. Salt water.

"I-I think I'm near the ocean..." Something rumbled in the distance and Yamashita instinctively curled in on himself as the sound grew louder and louder until it was almost deafening overhead, then died out to nothing again. "Near the airport, maybe..."

_"It's okay, just hang up the call and turn on your GPS. We can synch it to mine and I'll be right there, alright?"_

Yamashita had never been more grateful that Jin had talked him into buying an up-to-date cellphone, and hung it up quickly, hands shaking as he tried to do as Jin had instructed. His guess had been correct, and his location popped up on the little screen in colours too bright for his situation; barely a few hundred feet from the Tama River, in full view of the stretch of monorail track that connected Ota-ku with the Haneda Airport terminals were it not for the huge metal containers hiding him from sight, and far enough away from civilisation that in the middle of the night, he probably wouldn't have even had to bother muffling her screams.

Now, all he had left to do was wait.

Not five minutes later, his phone rang. The noise made his head throb even harder, and he accepted it automatically before checking the caller ID. Glancing down as he did so, he saw _Nishikido Ryo, connected_ flash up on the screen, and quickly hung it up again. It rang once more and Yamashita refused the call, then it stopped. Whatever Ryo needed him for could most definitely wait.

Soon, there was the distinctive sound of tyres on dirt, and Jin's car peeled into view. He must have driven like a madman to get there so quickly, and Yamashita could have cried with relief as his best friend flew out of his car and immediately froze.

"Oh, _shit..._ "

Yamashita studiously didn't look to see what Jin was staring at, had no wish to see any more of exactly what his hands were capable of doing. Jin seemed to shake himself and turned away, hurrying to his side and hooking an arm around him to help him to his feet. Yamashita cried out in pain and Jin very nearly dropped him, grip slipping for a moment before he tightened his hold again, his own clothes getting smeared with blood.

"My leg," Yamashita gasped out through gritted teeth, "Careful."

Jin nodded his apology and together they half-carried, half-limped him to the car.

"Ryo called me just now," Jin said, and Yamashita was glad to have something to talk about, "He said he assumed you were taking the day off, and that the prints came through on your knife. Just yours, of course, but luckily they think that's because you were the one that found it."

Yamashita swallowed and nodded, squeezing his eyes shut against the barrage of emotion that hit him like a train hearing his best friend talk about what he'd done almost nonchalantly. Guilt, relief, shock, affection, panic, comfort. It _hurt_ , and as Jin lowered him into the passenger seat and straightened, Yamashita clutched onto his wrist tightly.

"I'm so sorry, Jin," Yamashita said softly, eyeing the bruised skin across Jin's neck, "I-"

"Shut up," Jin snapped, then immediately softened, "That wasn't you, okay, he's... that _thing_ in your head, he's not you."

"I- He-he's strong, really strong," he whispered, feeling his eyes grow wet, "This whole thing, it was just... just to prove a point. I- he clears up after himself, makes sure I get home clean and safe and tidy and that there's no traces left behind at the scene... He tore that poor girl to pieces just to make a point." He drew in a shuddering breath and released Jin's wrist to cover his mouth so that his next words came out muffled, "I'm not safe to be around."

"Stop talking like that," Jin said firmly, "You're going to be fine. I'll help, whatever you need, we'll get you through this and you'll be fine. Just fine."

When they arrived back home, Jin stripped off his shirt, stained with blood, and left it in the car while he went to fetch some clean clothes, and helped Yamashita change into them in the back seat. He balled their sodden clothing up in a black refuse sack which he left in the trunk for now, and half-carried Yamashita up the stairs to their apartment, where he sat him down on the edge of the tub and cleaned and bandaged his wound - which was thankfully nothing catastrophic, meant to scare, not incapacitate - complete with a few messy, home-made stitches. It hurt like hell, but anything was better than going to the hospital.

The next few days were relatively normal, all things considered. Yamashita didn't ask where Jin learned to stitch flesh back together, and Jin didn't ask him about the girls he'd killed. Yamashita didn't ask how Jin managed to procure a legitimate-looking doctor's certificate signing him off of work with a combination of stress and exhaustion, and Jin didn't ask him about the girls he'd killed. Yamashita didn't ask how Jin could afford to spend all his time at home instead of going to work, and Jin didn't ask him about the girls he'd killed. It was a comfortable existence, but one that only lasted during the day. As soon as dusk arrived, Yamashita felt like some kind of monster - and really, perhaps that was true - as Jin tied him securely to his bed, long lengths of rope around his torso, wrists, arms and legs, with a makeshift gag around his face, then retreated to his own room and turned his iPod up to the max. He never forgot and he never left the house, and no matter how loud Yamashita shouted, no matter how loud he screamed and yelled and fought, he never, ever let him loose.

More than once, Jin had brought up the idea of going to see a third party, a doctor or a psychiatrist, someone trained in this kind of thing, but Yamashita was stubborn, and refused every time. He was dangerous, too scared of himself to be willing to leave the house, let alone bring someone else into their scarcely balancing equation. 

Unfortunately, they soon learnt that the denial method only made things worse. Both of them were getting weaker and weaker every day, a lack of sleep soon catching up on Jin, too, and the longer Yamashita went without rest, the easier it got for him to lose sight of himself. He could feel his 'other half', as he'd taken to thinking of it, lurking just beneath the surface sometimes, hovering, close enough to make him uncomfortable but never pushing enough for him to be willing to worry Jin with it. His friend was surviving on the rest he could get during the hour or so of peace and quiet there was between when Yamashita led down to when he awoke again, and that was fitful at best.

Yamashita lasted through almost two weeks of days spent studiously not talking about what happened at night, before he made his decision. He could feel whatever was inside of him fighting, clamouring to get out, and he could feel himself slipping, too. Jin would say something innocuous, and Yamashita would snap back at him, filled with a fit of irrational rage for a split second before it was gone like it had never existed. He'd pick up a glass to fill it with water, and end up smashing it against the wall, the shards flying out in every direction. Jin would painstakingly tease out every piece that embedded itself in his skin, cleaning and dressing the deepest cuts, and would clean up the glass without a word, but they both knew what was happening.

They were just too scared of it to talk about it.

And that, that had to be the worst of it all. Forget the pain, the psychosis, the death, none of that seemed to matter now. Not when it was clear that if Yamashita was going down, then Jin was willingly going to go with him.

That realisation was what had pushed him that final inch. That realisation was what had him waiting patiently until Jin had fallen asleep on the sofa, breath slow and even, before he pocketed his wallet, cellphone and several bottles from the bathroom cabinet, and headed to the nearest convenience store, typing out a mail to Jin on the way. The last thing he wanted was for his friend to think he was guilty of anything other than being too good a friend.

Yamashita had never thought he'd be grateful to have been assigned to one too many possible suicide cases in the past. Even with the other half of him trying to break out and stop him, it didn't take as long as he'd thought it would to force down the cocktail of tablets and drinks he'd seen used successfully before, including several types of sleeping pill he'd been prescribed over his years as a police detective. He turned one of the empty bottles over and over in his hands as the drowsiness began to kick in, and closed his eyes against the world spinning around him, leaning back against the driver's seat headrest.

This way at least, he thought, mouth curving into a soft smile, this way everyone would be safe.

 

-

 

The light that used to burn his eyes now only warmed his face, and sounds that had grated on his nerves were now like music to his ears. The sun shone, the sea danced and the breeze rustled through the trees. It was a beautiful day, and it was his alone to enjoy.

Making himself sick to get the worst of the pills out of his system had been a painful experience to say the least, but it was more than worth it when this was the result. After living in chains, his body was finally all his own, and that was the kind of thing he'd have gone through any discomfort to have.

It felt good to be free enough to go out again, to go to clubs again, to not have to worry about anything but enjoying himself again, and he walked through the doors and up to the bar with a smile.

The bartender eyed him up and down appreciatively. "New in town, huh?" She asked, voice silky with a distinct American lilt, "What can I get you, Mr..."

"Yamashita. But please," he said softly in heavily-accented English, and leaned forward into her personal space. He cast his eyes away from the mirror along the back wall, where he could see that pitiful, worthless excuse for a human that had inhabited his body for so many years pounding his fists against the glass, face contorted in an agonised, silent scream, and smirked.

"Call me Tomo."


End file.
